I'm finishing up a day of nothing much. It's been very very nice being my usual lazy self for a change.

I left off on Saturday, complaining about feeling rested. This of course was followed by falling back asleep, because I can't tell "rested" from a hole in the ground.

As a result, I got up to the Dome even later than usual - 7:30pm or so, I believe. Due to infinite parental love, they still fed me. I managed to help with a minor chore (replacing the light bulbs in one of the garage door openers), and we planned out another one (covering up an opening under a workbench, to keep the cat out).

Then I came home. I don't believe there was too much excitement following that until the Sunday show.

Nice little night. We had a bit of a Tower reunion group with Peter, Veronica & Amy, but the big thing was seeing Jill W, who is, of all things, married now.

I believe the last time I saw Jill was before I started this blog. An old member of the James gang, now all grown up.

She brought her friend Angie, who was a blast, and plans to be back this Sunday with a larger group.

There was also megnc86, synkitty, supersniffles, the elder Mark, Hex, Kellen & Sunny, and quite a few more, including an end appearance by lucydogstringer. All-in-all 22 singers, 8 rotations, and a fairly large chunk of income.

The oddest part of the show was the whole "biting" thing. I'm not really used to girls nibbling on my nipples, though, y'know, no serious complaints there. However, at the very end of the night, I apparently told Kellen she was cute one too many times - while hugging her goodnight.

She bit my neck. Hard. And seemed intent on getting her teeth to meet. She only stopped after I said "Dear, that's my jugular. I need that."

I had a red oval of teeth marks for two days, and one of the muscles is still bruised. The price of honesty.

Where some guy drove up in a truck (as I was walking in the door), jumped out, smashed a bunch of car windows, and then drove off again. April thinks it was someone she had to get to leave because of an open container.

I was one of those hit - he got my front passenger window. As a result, I ended up having to stick around until the Mountain View police were done with those of us affected.

The drive home was fun, especially since a chunk of glass landed in the receiver for my seatbelt. It's still in there, but at least now I've worked it enough that sometimes it latches. For that particular drive, I latched into the passenger receiver.

I'd arranged to give raven2000 a ride early Monday morning, so I got up extra early to at least scoop all the glass off of the seats proper.

I hung around through her thing, got her back home, and then headed up 10th St to Lotus Glass to get the window repaired. I hate dumping money into a car I plan to get rid of shortly, but I leave my equipment in there three nights a week.

It's a funky little place, and the woman at the desk is gruff to the point of rudeness (maybe it's a Korean thing), but the price is great, they had my window replaced within the hour, and they even cleaned up most of the broken glass.

Since I was out during the day, I then dropped the car off at my mechanic's to get the oil changed. He of course called me just as I was finally dropping back off to sleep.

I just didn't get much sleep Monday.

That night's show was quite pleasant. markobellydance brought Joe back to point out that there were actually nights where one got to sing (Marko did 5 songs, and Joe 4). Cheri showed up, hung out, and sang a couple. Kathy & David J did their usual appearance.

More Synthia, quite a bit of kizmet100, more elder Mark, more Kellen & Hex, some Cindi, and at the very end of the night, Erin.

Erin and her girlfriend had been there before recently - I think at the Sunday show. But she didn't get the courage to sing until the very end of the Monday show. And after quite a bit of encouragement from several people.

In the end, 14 singers, 10 rotations, and another reasonably nice chunk of income (tips were exceptional). The weekend bar income was 26% over target.

Tuesday I paid some bills, ordered some discs, ordered some new speaker stands (all the threads in the old ones were stripping), downloaded a few songs for the Tuesday crowd (I haven't posted about them, but I figured I'd mention them when I get the next chunk), and got started kinda late for my appointment.

Which appointment was a bad idea. I'd offered my services for a birthday party today in Vacaville. That's already out of my normal driving range, but this person wanted to interview me in person as well. We were supposed to meet at a Starbuck's at 4:45pm. And, without the accident near (not on, but near) the north 680, I would have been close to on time.

As it was, I was 45 minutes late. Joy and her sister looked familiar, I have no idea why. We talked for a bit, they wanted more guarantees than I can honestly give, and I took off back south to Alameda.

They ended up hiring a local DJ. Hopefully he'll work out for them.

I was actually half an hour early to the Shamrock, but very, very tired. Which is likely why I knocked the red mic to the ground during setup. It proceeded to make nasty noises whenever it was held certain ways for the rest of the night, which was especially irritating with singers that insisted on swinging it through the air, and didn't seem to notice

On the other hand, at least they didn't seem to notice.

I think I've worked out where I want to set up. It's reasonably out of the way, allows for the use of all three tables, gives me an actual reasonable amount of work surface, and also provides a fair amount of space for the singers.

Not that I had any. There were maybe six people in the bar at 9:00pm, including the bartender (Megan), and none of them seemed interested in singing.

So I just hung out at the bar until the Giants game was over (about 10:30pm), talked with Melvin, and schmoozed with a couple of friends of Megan's, Marina and Lindsay (or Lindsey. She wrote up her slips as "Linz"). They were fun (and cute), and it turns out that Lindsay works at Bowzer's Pizza near the Cat Club, so I may see her some Wednesday.

When Melvin pointed out the game was over, I decided to start singing. People then started coming in (likely because the game was over), and Lindsay, at least, kept cheering, but her and Marina didn't get the courage to put in a slip until after I'd sung 12 songs.

I was fairly proud of myself. I even managed to cue up a fair number of them during instrumental breaks, so there wasn't much dead air between songs.

And then other people got involved - one of the guys playing pool asked if he could "do a request" while I was singing. I shrugged - turned out he wanted to put in a song for himself. That was "Dizzy," who was a pretty fine singer.

Then Stella and Gabriel showed up - Gabriel's a good singer, but Stella is phenomenal. We had a couple of single songs (including a failed attempt to get Megan to sing), and then Stephanie showed back up. So, 6 rotations for the night including other people.

At least it was fun once it got going. Just odd that I had almost no-one from the first two weeks.

Bar income wasn't enough to hit the "cap," but enough to still be a fair chunk of change. Tips were nonexistent.

During shutdown, the pneumatic column on the "good" speaker stand failed completely. Given it was only about 3 feet that the speaker dropped abruptly, I'm going to assume the speaker is OK. But I felt a lot happier about ordering the new stands.

I staggered homeward, but not before stopping to see April. My food ended up free, because of a situation I'm not going to talk about. They've taken large steps to control it.

And no, there was nothing particularly disgusting about my food.

I was sitting next to a couple of girls from the Rail, which ended up sparking a discussion with April about strip clubs. Apparently we both like the Kit Kat.

I love that woman.

Then home, where I got most of the equipment out of the car, since I needed to figure out what was wrong with the red mic.

But first, there was some sleep.

It turned out the shock of dropping the mic had knocked the top off an RF can, with the result that a large piece of metal was knocking around part of the transmitter. It was quite a relief finding out the problem was fixable.

I believe I went back to sleep after that.

I managed to make it to the Wednesday show in reasonable time, and had few issues setting up. It was kind of a relief.

Though I couldn't quite get the projector to align properly - the words on the big screen were canted all night. Mildly irritating, but nothing serious.

So I was ready to go on time. Alethea and Rachel, on the other hand, were lagging slightly.

But then, there was no-one waiting outside. So I helped carry a few things around for them.

Scot Free showed up by about 9:15pm, and a couple ("Chewbacca" and "Stess") followed shortly thereafter. The first rotation was the four of us.

The second rotation added Matthew, Amy, and Evan. And then it took off. We had a nice little party. 25 individual singers by the end of the night, and 6 rotations. And the longest rotation was 18 long, so the wait was never insurmountable.

A very, very pleasant time, and while the pay wasn't exactly huge, it was quite satisfactory once tips were added in (for some reason, tips at Julie's and the Cat Club have almost always matched pay from the bar).

So lessee. Of the people I know, there was jannypanlj, and Brendan, and Wil, and Maria, and Tim. Cara was there as part of a group (Joshua and Guss, of the singers) did a very impressive job of Take Me or Leave Me on her own.

The only downside of the night was John. The older argumentative drunk type. He tried to throw his weight around as a friend of Patrick's - except he didn't know Patrick's number. Both Rachel and I did a reasonably good job of defusing him - more impressive in her case, since that involved not serving him after last call.

Packing up went fairly rapidly, but I hung around for a few hours, talking to Rachel and Alethea, and, um, sobering up. I believe I drove off around 5:00am.

I know I was April's last cash out of the day at 7:00am, which was just not right.

Then some sleep, but not too much, because I had things to do - like pick up my new speaker stands, drop by the bank, pick up some gaffer's tape, and get some new mic condoms. The fun stuff, what.

I got to the bar around 7:15pm, early enough to set up in a leisurely fashion. Which of course meant I was a little too leisurely - I didn't get started until 8:50pm, even though I had kshandra and the elder Mark signed up. I'm a little curious if it would have made a difference in the shape of the evening.

People showed up as they were singing. A lot of people.

The first rotation had 38 people in it.

Some of it was the celebration of sylvan's return to the bay, though a large part of that group - maiandra, firestrike, Megs, and her husband Stuart - didn't sing. Cindi took off from work early, but, well, she was going to be there eventually anyway. Though she wouldn't have had besspeacetime with her.

And tychobrahe and Josh wouldn't have come in. I actually got two songs out of each of those.

The Kristin W. group showed up. Miki and her mom Debbie came in. Gia's back from the wilds of Utah. Honey spent quite a few hours there with Uva ("Shishi") and their friend Angela ("Chacha"). There was a middle eastern contingent (Ari, Zahid, and Edgar) that may or may not have had something to do with Kellen, Keni, and Hex. Or maybe they were just hitting on Kellen and Keni. And Hex, for all I know.

Actually saw snafflekid, which is getting to be rare. One somehow suspects that him being there the same night as Aaron is not entirely coincidental.

A very pleasant, and quite busy night. It also made a fair chunk of change, though it was my fixed income night. On the other hand, Timmie got Kellen to walk the tip jar around, which was extremely successful.

But then, she's cute.

I managed to make it through four full rotations, but only because of the usual "no-one still there at 1:30am" bit, and also because I ran to 2:07am so Kellen could sing the last song (Closing Time, of course). Some post-show schmoozing (I had a nice talk with Debbie), and then a very slow, and very tired shutdown.

I was tired enough to be mildly nauseous. Or maybe it was the can of bacon&ranch Pringles.

Anyway, I felt much better after a salad chez April, and then came home to unload everything (including the stands from UPS), and sleep.

Several hours of that were in my chair, because the bed was covered with equipment and boxes. Then I woke up enough to unpack the stands and move them to the car, and set up the karaoke system.

And more sleep. A few hours awake, then more sleep.

I was supposed to go up to the Dome on Friday. Around 7:00pm, I rolled over, picked up the phone, and called them to say I wasn't going to make it. I'm still on the hook for this afternoon, however.

I finally crawled into the shower around 10:00pm, then headed off to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner at 11:00pm. They were open.

Saturday evening's still up in the air. The Silicon Valley Rollergirls are having a jello wrestling event downtown, and Timmie's going. On the other hand, Lindsay invited me to a show that involves Megan's boyfriend's band, and it would be good to make more connections with that crowd.

The fact that they're all attractive young women has nothing to do with it.

It's been a while since I've done any comparison shopping, but I replaced my windshield at the same place, it cost me on the order of $190, was done in an hour, and has given me no problems at all in the two years since then.